[PRP] Two Pound Fish

[Kisoni]

The cave he'd found was small, barely more than a little hole in the embankment just above the tide line, but it was enough for Kampfur. Three days he'd stayed by the ocean which had been very good to him, after his initial faux pas with some fish and a local girl.

Whether or not it was good for him to stay much longer was another story. Having a tribe so close by was a bit bothersome; he had more or less worked out their boundaries by now, but even so he didn't quite trust them not to suddenly expand or otherwise object to his presence on the periphery.

Kampfur twitched one ear, jerking himself back to the present as thunder boomed overhead. The rain hadn't started to fall yet, but it would soon...and though he was nearly certain his little cave would be out of the impending rise of water, he wasn't entirely certain.

A small difference, but one he should pay attention to. Still, with the water already rising and a long way to run to get up on the embankment itself, he was in no position to try and find higher grounds now.  

[Bronze Coffee]

It seemed like her meeting with this Kamp fellow spelled a bout of bad luck for her and her studies. She'd set up her little pond elsewhere, working on the design to try keep the starfish from escaping. It never worked, no matter what she did, and honestly she was at wits end with trying to figure out a solution.

Charybdis was wandering down to the beach where she met Kamp the first time. Surely he'd be gone by now? The majority of the starfish seemed to really enjoy the spot where the flatter rocks were to sun themselves. She figured they couldn't survive all day and night underwater without some kind of warmth. She suspected that's why the tide pools were full of them at certain parts of the day. At least they were until she showed up. They seemed to know she wanted to mess with them.

Either way, she was going to go explore, despite the weather starting to turn south.

"Maybe they'll be soaking up the last of the su-" She screamed as a loud clap of thunder sounded and just hesitated. "Well..." Maybe she could leave them alone?

She wavered, taking a step back and forth like she couldn't decide. However she wandered toward the embankment to see if she could see any on the shore. That's when she spotted a shock of familiar green.

"....Kamp?"  

[Kisoni]

Just about to return to his paw cleaning--Kamp was fastidious about his fur when he wasn't actively hunting--Kamp noticed a familiar, bright spot wandering down the beach.

"Don't," he muttered, though there was no way she could have heard him. He eyed the thunderclouds rapidly approaching over the horizon, a little alarmed the girl didn't seem to notice them, or how very stranded she was about to be.

Just as another thunderclap broke, she jumped and looked--at him.

"Of all the..."

He looked back at the dark, roiling sea and then to the girl, and then to the long, long stretch of beach between themselves and safety.

"There's a little path on the other side," he gestured to the opposite bit of his outcropping, where a tiny path had been worn upward from the shore. "Get up here before the storm hits!"  

[Bronze Coffee]

She was very single minded when it came to her knowledge. Sure, Charybdis was sort of aware there was fixing to be a storm, but she thought it was going to be a lot later. The thunder could just sound for hours before any rain actually fell.

Seems like she was wrong. Typical.

Charybdis looked at Kamp, a little nervousness behind those pink eyes before she nodded and took the path he told her about. Her bright paws carried her gracefully and swiftly over the warn path and over to him. The dark female's ears were completely against her head and when she finally came toward him, slowing out of her run, her tail started to curl between her legs slowly but surely.

"I didn't expect it to roll in like this!" Apparently, for a beach dwelling lioness, she didn't know the weather like she thought she did!  

[Kisoni]

"Great. So, not a typical storm then?" Kampfur, who'd come to his feet at the sight of her, didn't quite seem to know what to do with her so close to him. He stared at Char for several long moments before awkwardly lowering himself back to a laying position, facing the incoming raves. There was enough room for her to lay beside him, but only just.

Another roll of thunder, followed by a crack of lightning so bright it left spots on his eyes.

Kamfur's ears laid back. "Let me guess: starfish?"  

[Bronze Coffee]

So she had to hunker down with him. Charybdis' brows knitted as she slowly started to lower herself, trying to keep herself as small as possible. This was his spot, but honestly she felt like she was seriously imposing. She probably was.

The thunder made her flinch and the lightening made her duck her head and sigh. She wasn't scared when she was the comfort of her pride and her cave, but she just had to let curiosity get the better of her. Then he questioned why she was out here and she could only give him a little bit of a little of a sheepish look.

"...Maybe... You don't know me."  

[Kisoni]

"That's a yes," Kampfur drawled, with a hint of a smile across his maw. "Still haven't replaced them, then? Or did they all escape?"  

[Bronze Coffee]

"They keep escaping!" She blew out in a huff. "I keep building them what I think is a very excellent tide pool where I can always count on them being there, and they're never there after I move them! It's really annoying. I wish I could communicate that I'm not actually going to hurt them."

Sure she accidentally might have dried a few out trying to figure out how they breath, exactly, but it wasn't like she did it on purpose! She didn't know how long they could go without water.

"I don't know what to do."  

[Kisoni]

"Sounds like they don't want to be caged."

Kampfur rolled his shoulders, settling a little more comfortably in the cave now that they had a subject to discuss--even if it was a ridiculous one. The storm outside, bad as it was looming up to be, even helped a little: it gave him something to watch.

"If they stay in one spot that long, you probably won't be the only predator who finds them there."  

[Bronze Coffee]

"I'm not trying to be a predator, though. I don't see much else trying to eat them! Except the big birds. Maybe I need to shade the spot? Hm.. I could try to build it closer to some leaves of a shrub or something. So the birds couldn't see them that well..."

That got her thinking, and apparently she did it out loud. Her tail flicked from side to side as she basically ignored the weather raging on around them, the wind whipping now and again in strong gusts.

"Think that'd work? Hm!"  

[Kisoni]

"So would a rock. Y'know. On them." Kampfur wrinkled his nose.

"Why are you so insistent on getting them to stay, anyway? There seemed to be a lot of them just along the beach."  

[Bronze Coffee]

"Because I want to study the same ones every time. There are different starfish every day! It's very inconsistent..." Charybdis thought it made sense and didn't really have to be said. "If I'm going to study starfish they have to be the same ones. I can see how they grow, eat, if they sleep, how they're born... I dunno! They're neat and I'm super curious."

She looked at him with a serious look all of a sudden, eyes squinting slowly. "...Don't you have anything you're passionate about?"  

[Kisoni]

"Sure." He didn't. Kampfur made a face, gesturing idly with one hand as, outside, ran slammed down from the sky as suddenly as if it had been there all along. "Food. Shelter. Mm. Being clean?"

"These are important things. I'm not sure I understand the point in monitoring starfish, but hey. You do you."  

[Bronze Coffee]

"Those aren't passions. That's basic needs, survival. You don't have some ...something inside of you that you have to explore? Like, this driving force to... do something more than you already are? The need to understand something just a little better?" Charybdis continued to stare at him like she couldn't figure him out. Everyone she'd met seemed to have some kind of driving force. For a lot of females it seemed to be motherhood, some of them wanted to be warriors, some of them wanted to be healers. Everyone had something they loved to do, something that made them feel blissfully happy.

Then again everyone she knew as in a pride. Their basic needs were a given. She lived close to her parents in a small den. She hunted with a group for meals every day. There were even cub sitters so mothers didn't have to worry about their children when they were off hunting, or doing their duties.

"Don't you want to do something with yourself?"  

[Kisoni]

This was why Kampfur didn't talk to other lions, at least those in prides. Not that he had much experience, but something like this always seemed to come up.

He refused to look at her, to see that disgusted or--worse--pitying look he'd seen too many times. As though his life, simple though it was, weren't enough.

"No," he said simply. And then, though he debated the wisdom of it, he had to ask, "Have you ever seen the sunrise over a snowy mountain peak?"